


By A Thread

by cgf_kat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura and Shiro get to be actual teenagers, Allura is snarky, Alternate Timelines, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't usually tag ramble, I'm going to stop now, Krolia, Lance is inexplicably also a genius, Matt Holt isn't a holt, Oh wait, Past Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Time Travel, badass krolia, because my OC was, but come on we all know Lance is actually very smart, but he's still Lance, but he's still awesome, but this story seemed to require it, mild shallura, plance, plance au, plangst, they're complicated, they're not a focus, well in one timeline anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22554640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgf_kat/pseuds/cgf_kat
Summary: In a future where calling through time is a part of everyday life, Pidge loses her parents at a young age to a disaster related to the technology. Now, as she starts college, the new family she’s built for herself may be in danger. A cryptic call makes it clear Allura's life is in jeopardy - the life of her closest friend - but the threat may be something much larger. Pidge meets a strange grad student named Lance who seems to have an idea of what’s going on, and trusting him may be their only real chance.
Relationships: Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt, Lance/Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you let an old novel draft you can't finish sit around too long. 
> 
> It gets repurposed into fanfiction. Any weirdness in the characters' placements can be attributed to that, though I did change some things to fit better, but some things I didn't. Like the first person POV (for Pidge). That would have been....way too much work. XD
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think! If you all enjoy it I might continue converting to fic and posting, and if I do I'm hoping maybe it'll inspire me to finish the real draft. So I have an actually finished novel and all. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I can't wait to hear from you all!

There are no survivors from St. Louis.

The only people left behind are those who missed it.

I was eight when the city ceased to exist. One day that summer I was rolling in the grass in the park below the Gateway Arch; the next week I was curled behind the couch in my grandmother’s living room in Louisiana, trying to shut out the news network anchors.

My parents seemed off for weeks before that. I remember asking them if they were okay more than once, if something was wrong. Dad was hardly ever home, and when he was he was distracted. Mom was quiet, which wasn’t normal for her. They put me to bed early and spent nights holed up in the study, and they always looked tired. 

They said I was going to spend some time in Ruston with Grandma Jean. I was happy to have her all to myself, but I still remember the moments before my parents drove away. I hugged each of them so hard I thought my chest would break. I clung to Dad, and asked him again if something was wrong.

For once he didn’t deny it. “We’re trying to fix it,” he told me. 

“Is it time-call stuff?” I asked. 

“Sort of. I’ll explain when you’re older, Katie, okay?” Dad didn’t elaborate.

“Sam,” Mom whispered sharply. She was cutting her eyes at him in that way she had—the way she looked at me when I acted up in public. 

He shut up about it, hugged me one more time, and kissed my cheek. “I love you. Be good for your grandma.”

Two days later St. Louis vanished. My parents, my other grandparents, my school and my friends...everything went with it. 

For nearly fifty square miles every person, structure, and thing vanished. In their place was left not scorched earth or emptiness, but overgrown wilderness—as if the city had never existed at all. At the edge buildings and cars and roads just stopped, cut off cleanly. 

From aerial pictures I’ve seen, it looks like someone painted a giant green dot on the map over where my life used to be. 

“Ma’am? Miss. Excuse me?”

The voice pushes through my haze and I have to drag my eyes away from the memorial poster on the wall behind the campus bookstore’s counter. It’s been left up from the ten-year anniversary last month. Most of the poster is a reproduction of a painting of the gateway arch and the science center planetarium, and it doesn’t really help that I used to spend so many weekends there with my dad. 

I blink once or twice to focus on the bookstore associate across the counter from me. There aren’t a lot of real books here, but you can buy just about anything else—for probably twice what it’s worth—and here is still where one goes to sort out textbook problems. It’s funny how the way things are done can hold over, even when it doesn’t really make sense anymore. 

“Sorry?” I ask.

“It’s not a problem on our end,” she says, motioning to her holo-screen. “You’re not registered in a dorm; there’s a hold on your account.”

We don’t really use paper much now, but paperwork still manages to get lost. This phenomenon astounds me.

“My housing arrangements were approved six months ago,” I tell her. 

I pull up the final message with the housing approval attached on my tablet screen. The display roughly the size of an average book projects from the light metal stick in my hand. I practically shove the thing in her face, but she doesn’t even glance at it. She’s looking at me dully, tapping her first fingernail on the counter between us. 

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to go to the housing office and have them update your account from there. We can’t override your access to your textbooks. You’ll be able to download them as soon as the hold on your account is cleared up.”

Freshman are required to live on campus unless they live within commuting distance, or have family in the area. I don’t exactly fall under either category, but my grandmother’s house is here in Ruston even if she isn’t. We moved in with my aunt south of Baton Rouge when Grandma Jean got sick when I was twelve, but we never sold the house. Now that she’s gone, I technically own half of it—my dad’s half. I’ve wanted to come back here and take care of that house for years.

“You can’t  _ call _ housing? Or just upload my copy of the approval. It’s right here.”

I push the tablet at her again—a smaller motion, apologetic.

She pushes it back.

“I can’t access that system from here. You’ll have to go to the housing office.”

“But—”

“ _ Ma’am _ .”

She nods over my shoulder, and I glance back at the line of people behind me with their knickknacks and t-shirts. Most of them look like other freshman, with parents at their sides carrying mugs and magnets and license plates that say things like  _ #1 LA Tech Mom _ . 

I shift on my feet, subconsciously yanking hair from behind my ears. Wavy brown strands swing before my face. “Right. Yeah. I’m sorry…”

Not until I’m outside do I look back through the front windows at the line of parents and their freshman again. Something in my chest lurches, and something in my throat sticks. I spin and stride down the two wide concrete steps and past the bushes and flowers guarding the store entrance, and point myself across the grassy quad. The first of fall’s leaves dot the sidewalks, and I purposely step on the crisp brown ones. The crunching sounds give me something else to focus on.

Halfway across the quad is the fountain that’s home to the Lady of the Mist. The stone woman’s arms are open wide, welcoming. I stop for a second to make a wish. I’m not superstitious, but I know from orientation over the summer it’s something thousands of other students have done before me.

I would also rather not have to rethink my living arrangements at the last minute. 

A shrill beeping calls from the bag over my shoulder. I root out a small silver disk and press it behind my ear. The tiny connections embedded in my skin there are ready to receive it, and the disk clicks into place. As soon as it does I tap it to answer the call, and the loud voice of Allura Altea bounces around in my head.

“Piiiidge!”

“ _ Sorry _ , I forgot to put my comm on this morning!” I tell her.

“Really, Pidge, just upgrade to an implant model already.”

“I’m fine. I’d rather not have hardware  _ in _ my head, thanks. Well. _ More _ hardware.”

“Your loss. Now are you just going to stand there all out of it or do I have to wave a big blinking sign over my head?”

“What?” I look up and around. Across the fountain is a girl who’s all legs and long white hair. She’s grinning at me as she waves. “How long have you been standing there?”

Allura disconnects the call and rushes around the wide rim of the fountain to hug me. “Long enough,” she teases. “Space girl.”

I hold on maybe a little longer than necessary, but she’s used to that. When I let her go she bumps me with a hip, managing to unbalance me, and I grab her arm to steady myself and shake my head. “I hate you,” I say with a smirk. 

“No, you don’t.”

I’m only five foot one, so even with only a few inches more Allura is already taller than me. The fact that she usually wears heels—while I don’t because I would die in them—doesn’t help.

“What are you doing?” she asks. “Have you been out at the house since you got to town last night?”

“Yeah.”

Allura’s eyebrows go up when I tell her about the current problem. “But you had the approval for living off-campus months ago.”

“ _ I _ know that, but somehow it didn’t get into the system. I have everything I need to prove it; I just need to go to the housing office.”

She tuts. “You don’t ‘have’ to. We could have that fixed now.”

I ignore her. “What were you doing?”

“Coffee run,” she pronounces with all seriousness. 

I nod. “Important, of course.” I take another glance around the quad, and I’m surprised she’s alone. “Where’s Shiro?”

Allura graduated a year before me, with Shiro. We’ve been a trio since middle school, when Grandma Jean and I moved in with Aunt Karan. Neither of them came home for the summer; they’d found jobs, and stayed to work, so I haven’t seen them in months.

She waves a hand, almost dismissively. “A study group or something.”

I take a beat to respond to that. “Wait, what? Classes don’t start until tomorrow.”

“You know engineers; no life! Okay, you don’t know yet. You will. They’re everywhere. Besides, he started all the flying stuff too and...you know, only so much time in a day.”

She steers me in the direction of Wyly Tower, at the north side of the quad, where the housing office is in the administrative side of the building. She doesn’t give me time to respond to the tightness in her voice before the tower distracts me. 

Wyly’s white facade separates it from the tan, steel, and glass look of the newest buildings and the faded red brick of the ones that are even older than it is. As Allura tugs me along I look up to the narrow windows of the floors that house the campus library, and I can’t help feeling like I’m home. 

“You said your grandmother worked in the library here, yeah?” Allura asks gently.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling a little.

Allura doesn’t say anything else; she knows I’m already off in my own world again.

***

A balding man in khakis and a sweater opens the door beside the front desk of the housing office after Allura and I have stood to the side for several minutes. He asks for the girl having a problem. 

Allura raises a hand before I can say anything. “That would be me—because you can’t keep my friend’s things straight.”

He blinks once or twice, looks from her to me, and I wave in a small motion by my shoulder. “You’re looking for me.”

“Right,” he says. “You can come back.” 

He doesn’t say Allura can come, but he doesn’t say she can’t, either. She takes it as an invitation. The man doesn’t look back until he leads us into a cubicle. His mouth opens like he might say something, but then he doesn’t. Not about Allura, anyway. 

“Okay, now what’s the problem? Off-campus approval?”

I explain briefly and show him the copy on my tablet. He takes it and scrolls through himself. He brings up a window from the signature at the bottom to check its authenticity.

“This seems in order,” he says. “If it’s not in the system I’ll have to check with my supervisor, though. She’ll have her own copy of this to back it up. Then I can update your account and get this input correctly...”

“But it’s right there. I really need to look through my material for tomorrow. You can just—”

“It’s protocol. The encoding in the message you have here seems genuine, but you’d be surprised. There have been incidents.” 

“Is it really that important?” Allura questions. 

He doesn’t answer that question, just turns to his computer. After a moment or two he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Someone must have failed to update your account correctly after the approval came through. It’s not here. I’ll check the backups”

My arms are crossed, one finger tapping quickly. “What if you can’t find it?”

He drags a copy of the message from my tablet to one of his own and hands mine back to me. “You can wait here. I’ll be back.”

I start to follow him out. “But  _ what if you can’t find it? _ ” 

Allura catches my arm to keep me in the cubicle. She brushes past to glance around outside, then dashes back to the computer. “Keep an eye out for me, ‘kay?”

“What?” I spin around, and she’s already got half a dozen windows open that I can’t read for the gibberish. 

I must be more rusty than I thought I was. 

“ _ What are you doing _ ?” I stage whisper. I take the step and a half to the door anyway. I know very well what she’s doing.

“Please, Pidge. I’ve been here a year. Their network is cake.”

“Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in? I haven’t even started classes yet!”

“I’m only fixing  _ their  _ mistake.”

“You’re the reason they check everything, aren’t you?”

She smirks. “Of course not. They check everything thanks to meddling amateurs.  _ My _ work would never be spotted if I didn’t want it to be.”

Movement out in the main office catches my eye. “Someone’s coming, Allura.”

“Tablet,” she says. She swings an arm toward me. I give her what she asked for, and she copies the approval again onto the desktop in front of her with a finger and flick of her wrist. She hands the tablet back to me and I shove it into my purse and sit down again, back painfully straight against the cubicle wall behind me.

Several seconds later she closes everything she opened, just as someone comes by. I’m watching them walk past, holding my bag closed with white knuckles, and when they’re gone and I take a breath and look back Allura is on the bench beside me. 

“Try to get to your books again,” she tells me.

I let out a breath and do what she asks, because at this point why not?

When I try, everything is where it should be. The hold is gone from my account and I can access all of my books and the files for this semester’s classes. 

“You could have done that yourself if you’d wanted to,” Allura whispers. 

I give her a look, but she ignores me.

“Shall we go?” she says brightly.

We break from the office cubicle and ask the girl at the desk to tell whomever it was we were talking to that the problem seems to have fixed itself. We’re out the door before she can ask too many questions, and in the hallway, we break into a run. We probably don’t need to, but we’re us. 

***

“Do you have to be studying those class outlines while we’re trying to catch up...?” 

I’m working on chewing a cream-cheese-topped bagel at the coffee shop across campus when Allura pauses in her scolding of me to answer her comm.

“Hold on,” she says, and I toss a balled-up napkin at her. She bats it away as she sets her coffee down to tap at a button that’s invisible to me. Her implant is only audible to her, and I can’t see the interface that opens in front of her in the contacts she’s wearing, either. 

This is why I don’t want an implant; it seems a little crazy to me. Invasive. I know Shiro feels the same, and he must have tried to talk her out of it, but he apparently lost that battle. Allura didn’t have one when they left for college, or at Christmas, but she had it when I was visiting for orientation. 

“Hello…?” she says. “Yes. Yes, I’m Allura Altea. What—?” 

She stops, her mouth hanging just open. Her fingers close around an empty pastry bag on the table and the harsh crinkling sounds cut into the sudden silence. 

“What is it?” I ask immediately.

She doesn’t answer me.

“Thank you,” she says. “Yeah, thanks…”

I sit up straighter, switch my tablet off, and I think she hangs up then. Or they hang up, whoever it was. Her eyes go distant. The way she’s still killing the poor paper bag doesn’t make me feel any better. 

“What is it?”

“I um…” Allura is not often at a loss for words.

“What?”

“I have a call.”

She doesn’t have to elaborate for me to know what she means. At the Temporal Communications Call Center back in town, she has a call waiting for her from another time. 

***

I didn’t understand what time calling was until my closest friend in second grade took a call. It wasn’t often that kids got calls, and for a few short weeks after Keith took his the two of us enjoyed the grade school fame that came with it. He was the boy who’d gotten to go to the Call Center, and I was his best friend—the only kid in class with unlimited access to the story. 

Sometimes I acted as proxy to fill in the other kids at recess when Keith had too much of a crowd to deal with. I had the whole story down by heart: How he remembered going to the center, and his parents had to sign something saying it was okay for him to take the call. They seemed nervous, he said, but he was just excited to see what it was like. 

The next thing he remembered was finding himself in the booth after the call ended, with a funny weighted feeling in his arms and legs. His head and his ears were all tingly. His parents were waiting outside the booth and they couldn’t tell him who he’d talked to or what about.

“How is that a story?” Some kid always complained, even though the rest were enraptured by the mystery. 

“You wanted to hear!” Keith would yell.

“But that’s boring! Why can’t you remember talking to somebody? That’s stupid.”

Keith would cross his arms and draw himself up like he knew everything and everyone else was so dumb. It’s something I guess seven-year-olds are good at, but really I think Keith was a lot like Allura. It’s getting harder to remember him very well, but that makes sense to me. 

“Because I was talking to somebody in the future!” he’d say. “My mom says you’re not allowed to remember what they said if you’re talking to somebody from the future ’cause then you might go and do something bad, like steal or something.”

Of course, after that, everyone else would nod their heads and say  _ Ohhhhh _ like they got it. I don’t know how many did, but they didn’t want to look dumb. I don’t even know how well  _ I _ understood it then. 

Keith and I didn’t think anything else of it. It was cool for a while, and then the interest died down at school. We thought that was it, but he told me his parents were still acting weird. 

“They’re being way too nice to me and letting me eat a lot of candy and watch my shows way more often, and Dad’s letting me play games all the time on the really big holo screen in his office, but they didn’t used to let me go in there, and Mom asks if I want her to make me chocolate milk like  _ every five minutes _ , and last night they let me have grilled cheese for dinner for the third time in a row.”

“Wooow, really? I wish they were  _ my _ parents right now.”

That weekend he and his parents went away to an amusement park, and the weekend after that they took another trip. Then another. They took him everywhere he’d ever asked to go. Sometimes he missed a day of school to make a weekend longer. Once they were gone for a  _ whole  _ week. I never saw him outside of school anymore.

“We’ve got to finish our story!” I complained. “We haven’t decided how the princess is gonna get rescued.” We thought we were the masters of imagination, Keith and I. We spent weekends in each others’ bedrooms and backyards, slaying dragons and flying spaceships. 

“We will, as soon as my parents stop being weird.”

“You’re going somewhere else this weekend?”

“Yeah...I’m gonna ask if you can come with us one time though.”

“Fine. I love you,” I pouted. 

“Love you too!” Keith giggled and kissed me clumsily on the cheek. We were on the school bus home. An electronic voice from a panel in the bus wall by our seat piped up to tell us Keith’s house was next, and he gathered his backpack to be ready to go to the front when we stopped. 

That was our last conversation. 

Monday morning came, and Keith didn’t come back. I spent the entire day wondering where he was. I asked teachers who evaded the question. Other kids talked like they always did. Someone said they thought they overheard one of the adults say something had happened to him. My heart started to pound, and I didn’t understand how anyone could know more than me. _ I _ was his best friend. I should know more than anyone.

I didn’t know anything for certain until I got home from school that day. My mom was waiting for me, to tell me there’d been an accident. She didn’t tell me what kind of accident, just that Keith was gone. I don’t remember much else like I don’t remember much about the day St. Louis disappeared a year or so later. 

There are really specific things I  _ do _ remember from that evening—just a few. Like walking into the kitchen where Mom was waiting, and the way she was sitting there on the edge of a chair, chewing a fingernail. I remember the ice cream she gave me that night, and the way I didn’t register anything about it but the cold going down my throat. I didn’t really want it; I ate it mechanically, to make Mom feel better, maybe. The next summer I did a lot of the same things for Grandma Jean. She told me to eat, or sleep, so I did, only because I didn’t like the way she looked at me when she was worried. As a kid, I think I equated worrying her with hurting her, and I didn’t want to do that. 

I’m sure Mom worried anyway. “Do you want to stay home tomorrow, kiddo?” she asked me. 

I shook my head, because what would that do? She said Keith was gone, like our cat Snowy was gone and buried in the back yard and the goldfish had been flushed down the toilet. Staying home from school wouldn’t change that. I don’t know how deep my thoughts really were then, at seven years old, but I know I didn’t want to sit around at home and think about how we didn’t have a cat anymore and my best friend wouldn’t be around anymore, either. 

The next morning I was awake earlier than I’d ever been up for school. I practically charged the bus when it stopped in front of the house. 

A week later at recess, my tentative hold on pretending everything was fine was shattered. Two teachers—mine and another—didn’t know I was hiding against the outside wall of the building, near a fence at the edge of the playground. It was a little chilly that day. I’d found a lee from the breeze, and they couldn’t see me around the corner. All I wanted to do was sit on the concrete and keep to myself, but I overheard them.

“—heard of parents calling back once their children are grown, just to remember what they were like then,” my teacher was saying, when I picked up the conversation. “I think that’s sweet, really. I’d do it. I thought that was all it was. I told his mother that was probably all it was. No need to worry. Lord knows, if we all worried…”

“Thank goodness she didn’t listen to you.”

“Oh, I know. I feel so awful. It must have been them after all, calling him from someday down the road. Just not for the reason I thought.”

“You didn’t know.”

“Of course not! Why would I? Who would want to think that? But I suppose it’s a blessing now, that the thought crossed their minds. They were able to spend that extra time with their son before he died.” My teacher sighed. “Though who am I to say? Maybe they wish there  _ hadn’t _ been a call. That they had no reason to suspect.”

“It’s happened before, you know.”

“I’m sure it has. I just, I’ve never heard of—I mean I’ve never  _ known _ anyone…”

“Neither have I. Just stories. It’s horrible.” Even now I can imagine the other teacher shuddering, even though I couldn’t see them. “Why would they call later if they know what it did to them when the call came in?”

“Well it’s happened, hasn’t it? They say we can’t change anything in the end...one timeline and all that.”

I didn’t want them to know I was there, but I didn’t want to hear anymore. I plugged my ears and waited for recess to be over. 

When I got home I ran to my mom. I was already crying, because as soon as I was off the bus and away from the prying eyes of the other kids, I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

“Mom! Mom, where are you! Mommy!”

She’d been in the kitchen, and she met me in the doorway. She must have heard me, how upset I was. She was on her knees pulling me into her arms before I could start talking. 

“Hey. Hey, what’s wrong? Katie?”

“Did…?” I dropped my backpack and shuddered as I coughed through a sob. “D-did Keith die b-because he got a call? Do we die if we get a call?” It was the first time I’d said the d-word out loud. It was the first time I’d really, really realized that Keith wasn’t coming back. 

“What? No...no, that’s not how it works, kiddo. It’s not. I promise.”

“It’s not?”

“No…” Mom picked me up and brought me to the couch in the living room. I still remember that couch. Soft teal microfiber and cushions you could sink into. I loved it, but in hindsight it was pretty crazy. “Why did you think that?” she asked.

I told her what I could remember. I’m sure she was furious the teachers had let themselves be overheard—that they’d talked about such a thing outside at all—but she buried it, for me. She stayed on that couch with me for the rest of the day. 

She also didn’t lie to me. She and Dad never lied to me later either, really. They just didn’t answer my questions. Probably to protect me, after what had happened with Keith. So I wouldn’t worry. I still don’t know if I’m grateful or not for the way they handled it.

“They weren’t saying he died because he got a call, Katie. They were saying he probably got a call because something happened. Was going to happen, I mean.”

“But that’s the same thing…”

“No, it’s not. Katie, look at me.” She held my shoulders, and I did. “Time calling is just so you can talk to people. It’s a tool, like a comm or a tablet. What matters is what people do with it; it doesn’t  _ make _ things happen. That’s why Keith wasn’t allowed to remember who he talked to and anything they said, so he wouldn’t know about the future. Because things were going to happen the way they were going to happen anyway. Does that make sense?”

Mom tried her best, but I was seven. I wasn’t the most rational. And what stayed with me was  _ Maybe they wish there hadn’t been a call. That they had no reason to suspect. _

I still don’t know what kind of accident killed Keith. I remember Mom told me it happened on Sunday morning, but that’s all I remember. Now there’s no one left from my life then to ask. Were they back from their trip that morning? Were they just going to church, or did it happen on a trip they wouldn’t have taken if there had been no call?

If I believed everything Temporal Communications feeds to the public—if I believed what everyone believes—I would believe there was no way around it. Keith was always going to die. But I don’t know if I believe that. 

I also don’t know if my parents got a call before they died. If they did they didn’t tell me that, either.

***

My freshman year of high school I finally told Allura and Shiro about Keith. I told them what I’d heard. For minutes after I was done, there was no sound but the fall leaves rustling in the wind and the creak of the metal chains that hung a tire swing from a tree behind Shiro’s house. 

I climbed out of the swing, and Allura climbed in. Maybe it was just stalling. She looked at Shiro, who eventually cleared his throat and broke the silence. 

“That’s actually...ah…”

“We knew someone too,” Allura said. 

“Not as well,” Shiro added quickly. “I mean...he was my cousin, technically. We played together some as kids, but we didn’t know him very well.”

Allura’s hands clenched and unclenched around the swing chains. “Before you moved here he got a call, and he was dead three weeks later. We only know about the call because I heard Shiro’s parents talking. We were eleven or twelve; it’s not like they would have told us that.”

I sat down heavily in the grass. “Great.”

“What?” Shiro asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I just mean...I wanted to think it didn’t happen often. That the teachers were wrong.”

“It’s not like it’s some sort of conspiracy,” Allura offered. “People die, and people who loved them want to talk to them before it happened. That’s the whole point of being able to call through time, isn’t it?”

Shiro corrected her. “One of the points.”

“But that’s not  _ my _ point.”

I was shaking my head, arms around my knees. “Promise you’ll never call me. Either of you. It’s not worth it.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Allura agreed readily, raising a hand. Shiro just raised one of his own to agree with us. 

We didn’t talk about it after that.

***

“I have a call,” Allura says.

My stomach cramps and my knuckles go white as my hands clench into fists. “You can’t take it,” I say. “You know that, right? You can’t be thinking of taking it.”

“I have to.”

My air is gone. “What?”

She won’t look at me. I’m not sure she’s really looking at anything. Her head is bent, thinking. “Think about it, Pidge. What if it’s you? Or Shiro, or—?”

I’m already shaking my head. “I wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. You know that. We always agreed we wouldn’t. We would never do that.” 

Allura blinks and looks at me, sees me shaking my head, and the way she’s looking at me, the way she sounds, I think she’s trying to rationalize it to herself as much as to me. “What if there’s a reason? Anyone who cares about me enough to call me would know that. They’d know I wouldn’t want them to. They wouldn’t do it anyway if there wasn’t a reason.”

“But we wouldn’t,” I protest again.

_ No no no. _

“This is stupid,” I say. “You probably just forgot where you put something.”

Now I’m old enough to know it’s probably not the common good Temporal Communications really cares about. They wipe you of a future call because they can’t risk the liability of people using any knowledge of the future. It’s about money, and protecting themselves. Whoever calls pays for it—the service is really for the people calling back, after all; not for those taking the calls—so it doesn’t matter anyway. 

You don’t have to take a call, of course, but the caller pays for it whether you pick up or not. If you do take the call, you earn credits you can use toward making a call of your own. Calling isn’t prohibitively expensive, but it isn’t cheap either. That’s why the whole stupid system works. 

I don’t realize I’m shaking until I pull my hands down from the table and squeeze my arms around myself.

“Don’t take it.”

“I have to,” she says again. It’s apologetic this time. “You understand, right? If it was you, and someday there’s a reason important enough, you’d want me to pick up. I’d want  _ you _ to pick up.”

Maybe that’s another reason why it works. For some people, anyway. They pick up because they’d want an answer if they called. 

I make a face, but I nod a little. There’s silence for a while after that. Our coffee's getting cold. 

“Will you know if it’s not something stupid?” I ask eventually.

“Yes,” she admits, wincing a little. “Shiro and I worked out a few facial tells.”

How they wipe you is relatively simple for the person taking the call. Inaudible tones are emitted in the booth at the Call Center that not only ensure you won’t remember anything when the call ends, but also “temporarily, safely, and painlessly” paralyze your extremities. You can talk, but you can’t move. You can’t take notes. 

Facial tells are what everyone knows about but no one really talks about. Tells are things like biting your tongue before the call ends, letting out a breath or holding one—things that people work out with themselves or people they care about so they’ll know  _ something _ when the call is over if it’s important.

“You agreed to  _ take _ calls, didn’t you? You and Shiro.” 

She’s fidgeting. “We had to know we could get to each other if we really needed to.”

“How could you do that without telling me?”

“We have our own lives outside of you, you know. We don’t have to tell you everything!”

“I…” I stare at her and shake my head. A few incomplete sounds come out of my mouth before I’m able to answer that. “I know that. I just mean...” 

She’s already sitting back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, deflated as quickly as she got upset. I’d been ready to defend myself, but I trail off when it seems now I won’t have to. 

“No. Nevermind. I’m sorry,” she says, waving a hand. She takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “We just...thought you wouldn’t want to hear about it. Really.”

“Good point,” I say weakly.

Allura clears her throat, sits straight in her seat again, and picks up her drink to take a noisy sip. “Anyway, let’s just, you know, go see this house of yours.”

“What about the—”

“I don’t have to go right now. They’ll hold it for a week.”

It’s not the actual call that’s come into the center, but a message from whatever point in time the call will be coming from. The voice connection will be made when she goes to take the call. That way, no matter when she makes it to the center and gets into a booth, whoever is on the other end of the line will have only been waiting a few rings. 

“Do you  _ want _ to go now?” I ask. 

She hesitates. “Sort of. Maybe. I wouldn’t be opposed to getting it over with.”

I look out through the large windows at the parking lot, where my small gray car is hiding somewhere behind the larger, newer models, and when the lot starts to spin I have to take a few measured breaths to make it stop. 

“Neither would I.” I shake my head to clear it. “I’ll take you. If you’re doing this you’re not doing it alone.” 

It takes far too long to gather our things and find my car, but maybe that’s because we’re only giving what we’re doing half our attention. Allura doesn’t say anything as I get us going in the right direction, but silence is often how she says thank you.

“But we’ll know,” I say when we’ve stopped at a light. “If it’s nothing, then that’s it.”

“That’s it. And it’s probably nothing. Nine times out of ten, it’s nothing. So they say. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, or something like that.”

“That’s kind of a big difference, actually...”

“Nooo you don’t,” Allura scoffs. “I don’t think so.  _ I _ am the math person.  _ I _ will make the comments about math.  _ You _ will correct everyone’s grammar. Keep up, Holt. It’s only been a year and you’ve forgotten how this works.” She motions between the two of us.

“We need to call Shiro,” I tell her. 

“ _ No _ , we don’t. We don’t need to worry him until we know something.”

“Wait, really? You don’t want to call him?”

“NO,” she answers again, more forcefully.

I open my mouth to ask her what’s going on, but nothing comes out. I can’t ask her that. Not now. When we get through this and it’s nothing and we can forget about this call nonsense I can ask her that. 

“Fine,” I sigh.

***

I’m pretty sure Allura Altea saved my life. 

I remember the day she dropped into it much more clearly than a lot of things from that time. Looking back now, it’s a point of light in one of the otherwise dark parts of my life - my third day of school in south Louisiana, after Christmas in seventh grade.

“Do you  _ like _ eating by yourself?”

Those were the first words she said to me, hands on her hips, standing across the empty gray lunch table from me in the corner of the lunchroom I’d retreated to.

I glanced up at her over my book. My real, paper-and-glue book. Three days here and I hadn’t seen a single other kid here carrying real ones; it was kind of disheartening. “What?”

“I  _ said _ , do you _ like  _ eating by yourself?”

“Sort of. It’s kind of a habit now.”

She shrugged, sat down opposite me, and started pulling her lunch out of an insulated bag. “It’s okay; we’ll fix that.”

I put my plastic fork and the book down. “Did I say you could sit there?” I don’t know if I really meant to sound that hostile, but there it was.

“It’s a free country,” she said. 

I stared at her. “That is the oldest saying in the—” I stopped when I realized where that was going and scowled at the book by my tray.

She took a bite of her sandwich and nodded seriously, leaning over the table. “And you would know, wouldn’t you?” She didn’t bother to swallow before talking.

“Shut up.” In all honesty, maybe the whole losing yet another family member thing kind of turned me into a little jerk for a while. I’m not proud of that. 

The girl didn’t respond. Instead, she looked up at someone calling a name across the lunchroom. 

“Allura! Allura?”

“Over here!” she shouted. 

A tall, pale boy with a superhero t-shirt and straight black hair turned around several rows of tables over, spotted us, and headed over with his tray.

“We have a table,” he told the intruder when he made it. 

“And now we have a new table.” She turned back to me once the guy sat down beside her. “Anyway, so yes, I’m Allura. This is Shiro. Who are you?”

I picked up my fork again and went back to eating my school-issued meatloaf.

“Sorry about her,” Shiro said. “She’s just...her.” He smiled with his whole face, dark eyes included. 

“And he’s mine,” Allura added, raising a finger from her sandwich to indicate her male counterpart once more. “Just so we’re clear. I only share on the basis that that’s understood.” 

He opened his mouth to protest, but if he was going to say anything I didn’t hear it. I laughed once, then tried to cover. “Okay,” I said. I shoveled the last few bites of meatloaf and mashed potatoes into my mouth and gathered my things. 

It would have ended there if Allura wasn’t so persistent. They came back the next day, and the next. They ate, goofed off, and tried to talk to me sometimes, and I ignored them for more than a week. I read my books. I could have found somewhere else to sit, but I didn’t, and I didn’t know why. 

The second Monday after they’d taken over my table I was trying to read a library text checked out to my account. I’d activated one of the projection screens installed in the tables, and the holographic display created a barrier between me and the intruders. Even though the screen was much bigger than my tablet, I couldn’t concentrate. Allura was going on and on about the newest comm model—the implants; they were still experimental then—and her voice grew louder the more passionate she became.

“Why would you NOT want a computer in your head?” Allura was saying. “No more tablets or holo bands! The implants can do everything any of those can, all in a comm unit so small they can install it with a  _ needle _ . You can pull up any display you need and no one else can see it.”

“How does  _ that  _ work?” Shiro asked.

“You’re seeing the displays on contacts.”

Shiro shook his head and held up his wrist at her, with his holo band firmly in place there. “I still don’t see the point. I can have a computer on my wrist and a comm out of the way behind my ear; why do I need them both in my head? Seems dangerous.”

Allura and Shiro and their overly-technical arguments. It was something I’d learn to love later. Even then, I was smiling a little. Why was I smiling? I wanted them to shut up. Just because I thought the same thing was no reason to smile. 

“Well I’m getting one,” Allura insisted. “As soon as they work out the kinks and release them to the public and I can save enough money, anyway…”

“You don’t even have a job.”

“I will  _ get _ a job!”

I’d read the same sentence seven times. My middle finger was tapping the table, but it didn’t help me focus. Normally I could tune them out, but the  _ History of Temporal Communications and the Anomaly  _ was not the easiest thing to read even if I’d chosen to read it. I wasn’t sure yet why I did this to myself; I just knew I had to learn everything I could.

“You can’t get one, Al,” Shiro insisted. 

“You don’t get a say.”

“Your best friend since birth, and I don’t get a say?”

I saw Allura cross her arms through the semi-transparent holo screen. “No. Because we’re not dating yet. You’d only get a say if we were.”

Shiro threw up his hands. “Oh, so you claim me, but we’re not dating?”

“We’re not dating until high school. At least. We talked about this; there’s a plan.”

“We’ll be dating by the time you can get an implant then.”

Allura squirmed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Shiro looked like he was about to retort and start the whole thing over again, and I smacked the button under the edge of the table to turn the holo screen off. It snapped away, and though they’d twisted to face each other by now both of them blinked at me.

“Katie Holt,” I said. 

“What?” Allura asked.

“My  _ name _ . Since I’m not going to get anything done right now anyway. That’s my name. Since you were asking. Before.”

“She speaks! Shiro, she speaks,” she said, elbowing him.

Shiro had already turned back to his food and resumed putting his tacos together. “We knew that.”

Allura sent another elbow into his ribs, but he had nothing else to say just yet. “Oh, you’re no fun.” She twisted back to me, and Shiro gave me a small smile when she wasn’t looking. “So, Pidge, you’re seventh grade, right?”

“ _ Katie _ .”

“I heard you. Seventh grade, right?”

I let out a breath. “Yes.”

“Cool. We’re eighth, but—”

“I know.” 

I did know. Just because I hadn’t answered them didn’t mean I hadn’t listened, even if I hadn’t known I was doing it.

I don’t know how Allura knew—or if she even knew she knew—that I needed her. She didn’t know about my grandmother then. She didn’t know about my parents yet, or St. Louis. She didn’t know anything about me. 

Sometimes I think people can sense things, and I think no matter how brash she pretends to be, Allura is better at that than a lot of people. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t just walk away. I tried to cut her off and found her tied to me already.

See, I think we’re all tied to some people more tightly than others. We all have family and friends, but some of those threads carry more weight. They’re the ones who anchor us to life. Sometimes we choose who they are, but I think more often we don’t. And sometimes we don’t know the threads are there until they’re tugged at. 

I don’t know where my parents would have fallen in that spectrum, or how that might have changed as I grew up. I don’t know what sort of connections tied me to the friends I had then. I wasn’t old enough to know. I was eight, and suddenly all of them were gone, and I fell and I found out Grandma Jean was the only thread still holding me up. Then she got sick. 

I was hanging by a thread that was about to break. Allura didn’t know it then, but that first day in the lunchroom—when she refused to leave—she became my safety line.

It just took me a long time to figure that out. 

***

The Temporal Communications Call Center is a glass and steel dome on a well-kept plot of land at the edge of town. Flower beds and trees mark the entrance and the shape of the grounds, and wide paths wind lazily through the minimalistic but professional gardens. There are benches and water fountains along the paths, and I can’t help but think maybe the grounds are there to fool people into thinking nothing horrible happens here. 

I have the time to think about it while we weave through the packed parking lot twice to find a spot, and someone leaving finally gives me one. There are already a few people parked on the grass.

“Is it always like this?” I ask.

Allura studies the lot and shakes her head slowly. “No, actually. I mean it’s never seemed like a slow place, but I’ve never seen it like this.”

That makes me quiet as we get out of the car. When we meet in front of it her hand finds mine and squeezes briefly. 

I squeeze back. “I’m fine. You?”

“I’m fantastic,” she answers wryly.

Just inside the bright, naturally lit entrance is a wide lobby and waiting area, and the front desk is ahead across from the doors. Screens above the desk direct the incoming traffic right for booths in which to make outgoing calls and left for receiving. There are security checkpoints for both. Behind the desk and the checkpoints the main rotunda of the building is an open floor plan, with lines cordoned off by holo-guide tape leading to the door of each booth. There is almost no one in the right half of the building, but lines are twisting out into the lobby just to get to the security entrances for the receiving lines. 

We stop. Around us people are walking in, taking one look at the lines, and leaving again.

“You still want to do this now?” I ask. 

She steps into the back of the nearest line.

While we’re still in the lobby I stand with her, but when we reach the actual line I can’t go on. She has to scan her identification to pass the holographic security barrier and enter the real queue without alarms going off. They would go off if I tried to enter a receiving line because I don’t have a call waiting and the system knows it. 

“Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone,” she tells me.

“That’s my line,” I remind her.

“But  _ you  _ aren’t going anywhere.”

Allura grins and steps through the checkpoint backwards, waving to make her point, and sidesteps directly into the path of a towering dark-haired woman in a suit and long trench coat making a beeline for the exit down by the desk. 

I don’t have time to warn her, and I wince as they bounce off of each other. 

“ _ Really? _ ” trenchcoat woman says. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going!”

“Why don’t  _ you _ watch?” Allura retorts. “You were the one with eyes front.”

This is my best friend.

Trenchcoat woman’s mouth opens and she looks like she’s about to come back with something else, but there’s a shorter, younger man with her—similarly dressed but without a coat, because who wears a coat in Louisiana in August?—who nudges her and inclines his head toward the exit. 

“Krolia!” he says. His brown eyes are sharp, he seems to know what he’s doing dealing with her, but his posture and mop of light brown hair give the rest of him a more gentle impression - more gentle, certainly, then the icy almost purple gaze drilling into Allura from the man she bumped into. 

She glances at her - Business associate? Partner? - huffs out a breath instead of making another comeback, and stalks off. 

“Sorry,” the young man says, before he hurries off too. 

Allura blinks once or twice as she watches them go. She catches my eyes after a moment through the arch of the checkpoint, and we both laugh uneasily. 

She finds her place at the end of the line proper and waves at me one more time before the sea of people in the receiving half of the rotunda swallows her. Then I’m alone. There are no seats left in the lobby, so I find a nice patch of wall by a fake potted tree and sit on the ground with my legs folded under me to one side, because of my skirt. Allura would be right here on the floor beside me if she were here, but sitting crossed-legged in her jeans instead. We’re floor people, and we see no shame in that.

I watch people while I’m there on the floor. Mostly I watch the people leaving, and wonder if any of them have any idea what they’ve been told. 

I don’t know I’ve zoned out until I’m abruptly snapped back by shouting from across the lobby. 

“Does the sudden drastic increase of incoming calls not bother you? This is  _ exactly  _ what happened before St. Louis!”

What?

The shouting is coming from the desk. A tall, wild-haired young guy who can’t be much older than me is leaning intently over the desk grilling the receptionist, and two security personnel are already closing in on him from behind. The way everyone in the lobby is staring at him or pointedly  _ not _ staring must mean I’ve missed quite a bit.

I get to my feet, and I can’t hear what the woman at the desk says as she tries to calm him down. Her hands are out, placating, but it has no effect. He’s waving long arms around when the security guards grab him and drag him backward.

He’s barely fazed. “Something could happen! Just look at the patterns.  _ Your own data _ . You’ve got to get people out of here!”

_ This is what happened before St. Louis? What does that even mean? _

I need to know, and I take a halting step forward. I tell myself to breathe and gather my inner Allura. 

I’m moving again. By now, thankfully, most of the lobby has written off the spectacle as over. The crazy guy is going to be thrown out or held and handed over to the police and they’ve gone back to their tablets and conversations and thumb-twiddling and wall-staring. Mostly unnoticed, I bound up to the group before they’ve reached the lobby side-door that must lead to the security office.

“Wait! Wait!”

The younger of the two security guys stops and looks at me curiously, and the other reluctantly stops too.

“Wait, don’t…” Being out of breath is not acting, and I have to stop for air. “Wait, I’m...sorry, look, it’s my...cousin...here. He just...I think he’s been off his meds. I’m really sorry.” I push my voice into the higher part of its normal range, and use my lack of height to my advantage and talk as quickly as I think they could understand. “We were waiting on my aunt. I just went to the bathroom and he...you know. Look, I’m really sorry. Can I just take him? We’ll just go. We’ll go wait outside, or in the car or something. Is that okay?”

Hopefully they buy the cousin story. Nothing closer would have worked; his light brown skin is still a far cry from me and my sunlight-deficient self. But even though he’s blue-eyed and a head taller than me, he’s thin and brown-haired like I am. I hope it’s enough.

Who am I kidding; it’s not going to be enough, is it? We look nothing alike. 

Still, the younger guard looks to the older one and shrugs. The guy between them who did the shouting, after looking at me like  _ I _ was crazy while I was talking, turns on them with a perfect embarrassed smirk. 

“Please?” I say. “I promise we’ll just go outside. He won’t bother anybody.”

The older guard rolls his eyes and lets out a heavy breath. He holds his hands up as if to say ‘fine, out of my hands,’ and the younger one smiles at me and nudges the guy they were holding in my direction. I grab his arm and drag him away before I can think again.

I drag my new charge out the front entrance and around to a relatively deserted stretch of path in the side yard, in the shadow of the building.

“Look, thank you, but I’ve got to—”

“What do you mean this is what happened before St. Louis?” I stop and spin to face him, and he nearly runs into me even though I’ve let go. He falls back a step and drags his fingers through his hair. 

“The much bigger than usual influx of calls,” he answers quickly. “Someone should have realized it could mean something. The same thing has been happening here. For nearly a week. This isn’t the first day it’s been like this.”

“Then why are you only here now?”

He pulls a small tablet base out of his back pocket, activates it, and scrolls through data that I can’t quite make out. “Been trying to make sense of the patterns. Then I realized this morning the bulk of the calls stopped yesterday and most of this,” he said, sweeping an arm at the full parking lot, “must be people who were contacted before today, who haven’t been able to get in to take their calls yet.”

I cross my arms and study him. “You obviously don’t work here. How do you even have access to their call logs, or whatever you’re looking at?”

“That’s not important! What’s important is that something could happen here. Today.”

“If something like St. Louis was going to happen getting people out of that building wouldn’t make a difference.”

“Of course not, but I never said it was something that bad. It’s not even just here.”

“What?”

“I don’t have time for this,” he says. He twists back toward the entrance, trying to leave, but I grab his elbow and pull him back. 

“I was  _ from _ St. Louis! I lost family when it disappeared, and I have a friend inside that building right now!  _ Tell me what is going on! _ ” 

I’m going for an urgent whisper, so as not to draw attention, but it comes out louder. He glances quickly around us and turns back to me, leaning in closer than before.

“I  _ don’t know _ , okay? I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m working with a lot of  _ ifs _ here.” He straightens, making a visible effort to calm down. “Thank you. For the help, I mean. That was...kind of amazing, actually.”

I swallow, aggressively shoving down the warmth in my chest at that. That doesn’t stop it from reaching my cheeks. “It was more my friend than me.”  
“What?”

“Nothing.” I shift on my feet anxiously. “Are you serious? Something could happen here? People could be in danger?”

“Yes,” he sighs. “Or I could be wrong and the influx could be for some other reason completely. Or there is some sort of danger, but it’s not here and now. I don’t know.”

It’s always about what we don’t know. 

“What can we do?” I ask.

“No more bright ideas?”

“I told you—never mind. Hold on.”

I take a few steps away to call Allura. She doesn’t answer, which I hope only means she’s in a booth.

“Your friend inside?” the shouting guy asks.

“I tried, but she’s not picking up…” I cross my arms and a finger starts tap, tapping away against my sleeve. When I start to pace the concrete path, he follows me.

“Let’s go around the back,” he says. “I may be able to get us in the building. If we can shut everything down, or—”

“How?  _ How _ would you get us in? Who  _ are  _ you?”

He smiles at me for the first time, and it’s more than a little disarming. I didn’t expect that. “Who are  _ you _ ?”

I shake my head at him in frustration and reach up to tap my comm again. There’s still no answer. I don’t know what else to do, and I probably shouldn’t let anyone from security see me back inside, so I follow the strange shouting guy around the side of the building toward the back. 

Moving farther away from the entrance is probably the only thing that saves us when the ground rocks and the front of the dome shatters outward in flames. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

I can’t breathe. I’m on my back on the ground, in grass and dirt, and something is smothering me. My ears are ringing and that’s all I can hear and I don’t know what happened. Everything hurts and I need air. 

Heat. That’s the other thing. Heat and noise that I still can’t make out because of the ringing. Why can’t I see?

The darkness lifts away and there’s a face. I drag in a breath that burns and hurts my chest and I’m coughing, and there’s a hand behind my head now instead of the grass. 

“—you okay? Hey!” 

The voice sounds faint to me, but I know it’s shouting.

Shouting. Shouting Guy. Blue eyes blinking down at me. 

While I’m trying to stop coughing and blinking—dust?—out of my eyes, some part of my brain decides Blue sounds better in my head than Shouting Guy. The weight on me is him, protecting me from the glass still scattering around us. I now vaguely remember being knocked backward, the air going out of me when he knocked us off the path and we hit the ground.

“Hey! Are you all right?”

“I’m…” I cough one last time and clear my throat. “What happened?” It comes out rough, sticking in my dry throat. 

Blue doesn’t answer. He rolls off me and stares back toward the call center entrance we just came from. It isn’t there anymore. 

We’re both catching our breath, gulping dusty air that smells of smoke. The glass of the dome is shattered around the building, around  _ us _ . Metal beams that supported the glass jut out into the air, bent and broken. The sounds around me solidify into screaming and crying and the faint flickering of flames.

A hand drops in front of my face, fingers outstretched. I glance up and Blue is on his feet offering me help. I take his hand, let him pull me up, careful not to touch too much of the rough grass around me. Glass is scattered everywhere but right where we were lying. Stinging sensations on my neck and legs tell me I didn’t come away unscathed, but I don’t have time to take stock right now.

_ Allura _ . 

I open my mouth and only a gasp comes out at first. I’m trying to tell him she’s in there, she was in there, help me, but I don’t get the chance. Another deep percussion assaults my eardrums, and Blue is pulling me behind a tree and smothering me against his chest again. I’m screaming. Most of it comes out against his shirt. 

We don’t feel much from the second blast. Just the heat, and the sound. We look up and the flames are coming from the back of the center, on the other side—from the administrative building behind the dome, where I assume any offices and equipment are. 

“Allura!” 

I break from Blue and I’m running, but I’m running back for the front of the building because I don’t know how else to get in. I’ve forgotten about him, or asking for help, or anything else at all.

“Allura! Allura!” I hear myself screaming. I know it’s useless because I can’t be close enough for her to hear me. Not yet. Probably. But I can’t make myself stop, either.

Blue grabs my arm. “You can’t go that way!”

I yank myself away and keep going, the motion probably more violent than was called for. “I have to find her!” 

Strong arms catch me from behind. It’s like running into a bar, and I’m kicking and scratching.

“That’s the direction the first blast went! It won’t be pretty. The lobby and parking lot will be a minefield.”

“So’s the back, now!”

“On the other side, yes. We can get in on this side. Look up, the power’s all out. No locks. Calm  _ down _ .” I stop struggling. He’s letting me go, but I pull away angrily anyway. “You don’t want to go up there right now,” he says when I turn back to him. Some of that gets through, and my mind shies away from what he really means. I block out any imagination before it cripples me. 

“We have to find her,” I say again.  _ Focus. Just focus on Allura.  _

He swallows. “Allura, you said. Allura  _ Altea _ ?”

“You know her?”

His head cocks to the side, neither a yes or a no. “She’s a student worker in my lab.”

“You’re a student?” 

“I know what she looks like. I can help you find her.” 

I’m still leaning toward the rubble that used to be the front doors when he lifts a hand from his side just enough to offer it to me again. 

I need to find Allura. I need to find her so badly it’s an ache in my chest, and it’s still hard to breathe. All I can do is nod and take his hand. 

The look on his face when I take it reminds me I’m not the only one here. He was here to stop this, to stop  _ something _ . Something happened anyway, and I wonder if he needs someone now, in this moment, as much as I do. 

I only get a glimpse. Then he’s turning, pulling me with him, and we’re running the path around the building, dodging particularly large pieces of glass and bits of metal and concrete. I wave my free hand around my head, but it doesn’t help to clear the smoky air.

“Why?” I ask. “Who would do this? It can’t be PACTT…”

People Against Calling Through Time has never been known for violence. 

“Of course not. PACTT is nothing but a bunch of rabble-rousers with pickets,” Blue snorts. 

“I was Junior PACTT in high school…” 

“I’m sorry,” he says. But it’s sarcastic, and I growl at him and brush past. 

We find a side door, and it’s just as unlocked as he supposed it would be. The center’s power and computer system are out. The scanner on the door makes a dull error sound with what emergency power it’s getting, and it lets us in without any verification. 

“What?” Blue asks, when I give him a look.

Inside the corridors are lit only by emergency lighting, but at least here in a dim red hallway, once the door closes behind us, I can hear myself think. My head clears enough that it occurs to me to try my comm again, but all I get is static when I tap it. 

“Is your comm working?” I ask.

Blue taps behind his ear and shakes his head. “Interference from the blast, I’m sure. Come on,” he says. “We don’t know how stable the rest of the structure is. I guess we’re looking for a way out into the back of the rotunda. She was in line? Which side?”

“Receiving.”

We pass offices and warning signs, following the now faint sounds of the chaos outside, shouting and sirens, back toward the rotunda. The building shudders around us and we stop for a tense moment as dust falls on our shoulders.

My jaw clenches. “If the people who did this were here…” 

But there’s no way they are. There are too many ways they could have done this remotely. Or set something hours ago. Or days or  _ weeks _ ago. 

And I don’t have the emotional space to finish my threat. 

“Why?” I ask again. “Why would anyone do this?” 

Blue doesn’t look at me. He keeps his eyes on the dim corridor ahead of us. “There are plenty of people who don’t like what TempCo does. More than you’d think.” His voice grows tighter as he speaks. “There are always awful and misguided people.I’m sure some of them wouldn’t bat an eye at harming innocent people. Some of them only care about the timeline—themselves, really. They think they’re better, but they’re not.”

I could say that doesn’t make any sense. I could say there’s not supposed to be any danger to the timeline from time calling. That’s what Temporal Communications has always told us. But if I have my doubts, why wouldn’t other people? There are rumors everywhere. Whispers of violence and conspiracies. I don’t know what to believe.

I’m trying my comm, tapping it again and again as we hurry through the cold corridors and willing it to work. Willing Allura to answer. My arms brush the chilly silver walls.  _ WHY is it so cold? The blast sites are burning; how can it be cold here?  _

“How did you know something was going to happen?” I ask. “Did you think it would be something like this?”

“I don’t know  _ what _ I thought.”

“But how did you know  _ any _ of it?”

He can’t answer me, because the relative quiet abruptly ends. Double doors at the end of the corridor we’ve turned into smack open, and people from inside come pouring through. Some are injured, some are just dirty, and they’re looking for another way out of the building.

I only catch snatches of things, while Blue and I try to tell them how to get back to the door we got in through.

“Dome gone—”

“—lobby blocked—”

“—beams falling—”

“—fire team here, can’t get to us that way—” 

I start calling again, pushing through the crowd toward the doors, toward what’s left of the dome.

“Allura!”

Where is she? These people, I gather, were at the back of the dome. Near the ends of their lines or in booths. Most of them are fine, for the most part, but I think they’re saying they can’t get out through the front. Too much has collapsed. But if these people are fine Allura should be fine. Where is she?

“Allura!” My voice cracks. 

What if she wasn’t far enough back? I stop short of the doors, and the flow of people has slowed. I still haven’t seen her and I’m dizzy and I want to throw up. 

I reach for the wall to steady myself, but find a warm shoulder instead. Blue steadies me, stays at my side. It’s only now that I really see the cuts along the backs of his arms. He protected me. I don’t even know his name yet. 

“She’s still in there,” I gasp.

He’s quiet for a moment. “I can look,” he says finally. “First. For you. If you want me to…”

I’m back to only nodding again. He squeezes my shoulder, maneuvers me against the wall and goes on without me. When he’s gone I sink, bent at the waist and telling myself I won’t go all the way down. 

When the door bangs open once more I jerk, pulling up against the wall again and staring wide-eyed. It’s Blue, beckoning. 

“She’s in here! She needs help. Come on.”

I push off from the wall with a foot. My mind is blank until I’m through the doors, around a corner, and through the last doors into the rotunda. Immediately there’s dust again, and heat, and stench, but the glass is gone and the sun shines through to the floor. The jutting metal beams that still hang above break the light into streams. 

At the edge of one beam of light, on the floor with one ankle bloody, is Allura, surrounded by debris and broken stands that used to project the holo-guides for the lines. 

“Pidge!” Her voice breaks.

I’m running. I land at her side and I don’t particularly care that bits of concrete and glass are biting into my knees when I throw my arms around her neck.

“Never do that to me again!” I don’t mean to shout in her ear, but that’s the way it happens.

“ _ Me _ ?” she sobs. I sit back on my heels, and her face is streaked with grime and tears. “I thought you were  _ dead!  _ Everyone was saying no one in the lobby could have survived!”

Blue comes to a halt above us, making a face. “That’s...probably not far from the truth, really.”  
“What?” Allura asks. She blinks up at him, swiping hard at her cheeks in quick motions. “Lance?” Blue has a name then. 

“I wasn’t in the lobby,” I explain when Allura focuses on me again. I glance at Blue...Lance. “Long story.”

He helps me haul Allura to her feet, and between the two of us we get her back through the long corridors and out of the call center. We only stop once for a breather, and not for long. Lance doesn’t trust the building. I don’t either, even though I know nothing about the interaction of architecture and explosions.

He leaves us with the teams of paramedics that have arrived on the scene by the time we make it out. 

“Thank you,” I tell him. But he only nods and gives me a tight smile. He says something about helping to make sure everyone is out of the building, and he’s gone.

“What…?”

Allura leans on my shoulders while we wait for someone to see to her leg. Both of us are trying not to look back at the devastated call center; she’s picking grass from my hair while I’m brushing dust from hers and picking away bits of glass from her clothes. 

“That’s Lance for you,” she says.

I’m too tired to ask what that means. 

***

Allura’s ankle is sprained and there’s a nasty gash along it, but nothing more serious. Spray skin seals the gash and does the same for her other minor cuts. I try to tell the paramedics I’m fine, but they insist on checking me over. They clean and seal the few cuts I have on my arms, and then they see my knees. That takes longer.

I’d almost forgotten about them. Allura spends ten minutes berating me while one of the paramedics picks out concrete and glass bits before sealing the abrasions. 

“I seem to recall you didn’t complain then,” I remind her, rolling my eyes.

“Shut up.” It comes out much sharper than usual, but I give her a pass on it. It’s been almost two hours now, I think, maybe more, but her hands are still shaking as she sits beside me in the grass. I try to offer her the water bottle I’m holding, but she ignores it. She didn’t take one when the emergency crews were passing them out. 

With the scratches and blood gone, all that’s left is dirt and bruises. I want nothing more than a good shower, but we have no way to leave unless we plan to walk. I can see my car from here and I think it’s all right, but the debris in the parking lot is blocking the drive. No one can get their cars out and we’ve all been told we’ll have to leave them here for a day or two while everything is sorted out. The whole area has already been taped off. A pickup line is forming at the curb at the end of the long drive.

That makes me wonder if our comms are working again, and the familiar beeping in my ear is my answer. It’s Aunt Karan.

“Katie? I’ve been trying to get through for two hours! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. It’s all over the news already?”

“Of course it is!” She pauses. “What do you mean?”

_ Shoot. _ I make a face, motion to Allura that I’m moving off to talk to my aunt, and get to my feet. I have to explain that yes, we were there, but we’re fine. I have to tell her that several times before she calms down.

“You haven’t seen the news then?” she asks finally. 

I’m rubbing my eyes, trying to wish away the headache behind them. “I was there. Why would I want to see the news?”

“Katie…” I’ve heard that warning tone before. I cringe. “It’s not just Ruston.”

“What?”

When I make it back to Allura she’s swiping away the display in her contacts with a motion across her face. When she looks at me she seems paler than before. “Pidge, it’s—”

“I know. Aunt Karan told me.”

Allura nods and looks away. “I called Shiro. He’s coming to pick us up.”

I help her up, and we hobble our way down to the curb and the lines of people still waiting for their rides. 

When the dark blue car makes it through the line and close enough to the curb for us to get to it, I help Allura into the passenger seat and then slide in the back. By the time I’ve closed the door behind me Allura and Shiro are bent over the short space between their seats clinging to one another. 

“And you’re okay?” Shiro’s asking. “You’re  _ sure _ you’re okay?”

Allura nods against his shoulder and squeezes him tighter, just for a moment, before she pulls away into her own seat and stares out the window. Shiro looks back at me.

“Pidge?”

The car behind us honks, and I wince and tell him we should get going.

He pulls away from the curb, moving slowly. The entire street is still congested. “Where are we going?” he asks. 

That’s when I realize he has the holo display up on the dashboard. The news is running, and the first scene I see is just like what we’re leaving behind. But it isn't Ruston; there are skyscrapers in the background.

“How many?” I ask weakly. “Do they even know yet?”

Shiro follows my gaze to the dash display before focusing on the road again. He can’t set the Autodrive until we know where we’re going. “Places?” he asks. I nod, and he catches it in the rearview mirror. “A dozen or so?”

“They’re all cities,” I say as the images pass. A list of the affected call center sites begins to scroll past in the crawler at the bottom of the display—New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Birmingham, and others—while the footage rolls and an anchor drones on. “We’re not a city. Not a big one. We’re the only one that’s not. How does that make any sense?”

“Just go to the dorm,” Allura says. “There’s no food at Pidge’s house.”

“You’re hungry?” I ask. 

“Not really, but we should eat, shouldn’t we? I don't know…””

“Which dorm?” Shiro asks. 

“Mine. Yours. I don’t care.” 

We make a turn and traffic begins to move more normally, as we make our way back toward campus. 

I hold out the water again. “Please drink something now?”

I sigh when Allura takes it this time, but I’m not at all thrilled when she gargles out a small cry after she swallows a swig of water. 

“Ow! Wh—” She drops the bottle into the cup holder and reaches into her mouth. Her finger comes out with spots of watery red, and she checks again, making a face as she brushes the inside of her cheek. When she pulls her finger out again she’s staring at it much more than one should about something like that. 

“Allura?” Shiro asks, probably louder than necessary. 

She’s looking from him to the blood on her finger and back again, holding her cheek.

“What?” I ask. I’m beginning to hate being clueless. 

She wipes her finger off on her already filthy jeans. “Nothing. It’s nothing. It was an  _ explosion _ , I mean I probably just bit it when—”

“Were you in a booth?” Shiro asks anxiously. “Before it happened?” And now I know what they’re talking about. I watch Allura’s face, waiting for an answer. She doesn’t have to say it before I know.

“Yes…”

The steering wheel jerks and Shiro has to steady it again. Then he’s pounding on it with the stresses in his words. “ _ How _ could you not have  _ noticed _ that before?”

“Everything else hurt!” she shouts over him. “How was I going to notice that!”

“What does it mean?” I’m yelling. If it’s something she did on purpose, because she made it into a booth and heard something before the explosions, then it means something. 

The red light ahead of us changes back to green. Shiro had started to slow, but he isn’t paying attention now.

“Shiro!” I shout. 

He speeds up through the intersection before someone can plow into us, but Allura tells him to pull over. He swings off the road into the mostly empty parking lot of an intramural field. 

Allura pushes out of the car and stumbles to the grass on the curb, dropping to her hands and knees and heaving. I jump out beside her, to hold her hair. Shiro follows us, but even though he’s only standing there he looks as sick as she does. 

“What does it mean?” I ask again. 

Cars pass on the road and there is honking, shouting, people angry—probably at us—but it’s just noise to me right now. All I can think about, for some reason, is the museum trip in the spring of seventh grade. Allura was there for me, holding  _ my _ hair, and I don’t want to imagine the last few years without her. I don’t know why I think that. Maybe it’s because I can’t see her face this time, like I could in the car before, but I still know what she’s going to say. 

Shiro drops to his knees beside us, but he doesn’t answer my question. He doesn’t have to now. Allura coughs and wipes her lips on her sleeve. 

“It’s me,” she says roughly. “Something’s going to happen to  _ me _ .”


End file.
